Posted
by
timothy
on Saturday April 06, 2013 @06:00AM
from the year-of-the-linux-sorta-console-looking-thing dept.

dartttt writes "Dell has launched a new Ubuntu gaming desktop (first ever?) . Alienware customers can now choose either Windows or Ubuntu when buying a new X51. Ubuntu option is initially available to U.S. customers only and the price starts from $599." Also in Ubuntu news: Canonical announced on Friday the final beta release of Ubuntu 13.04, aka Raring Ringtail (the main release, as well as the growing flock of other *buntus).

I have about 30, most all of them are compatible or will be once Valve releases HL2. And we already know any new games Valve releases will be Linux native. There are also dozens of sweet Kickstarter projects about to be released also. And lgdb.org has a huge database of games.

I think what you are really saying is "Where are the Graphically Superior Games". Well, IMO Graphics don't make the game, but they are nice to look at. The solution is to stop buying Windows only games and check the compatibility before you buy a game so you're not stuck.

While I agree quite a few games with older graphics are often better games. People don't tend to spend the luxury price for an alienware PC to play world of goo. That being said I do believe if valve can manage to push things foward with the "steambox" idea, we could wind up with an unprecidented future generation of games with linux compatibility.

Of the 30 Xbox games I have, only about 8 of them work on Xbox360. THats how i view this issue, as a back-compat problem. Both Sony and Microsoft have paid lip service to back-compat but Steam on Linux is supposed to somehow magically do everything. Its going to take time, but more AAA titles WILL be coming to Linux.

That's because the DRM on these Linux games tends to be Steam DRM. DRM is evil, but Steam DRM tends to feel less evil to the user in practice. Unlike Assassin's Creed 2 and SimCity (2013), which made headlines for requiring a continuous Internet connection during gameplay, games using Steam DRM only require the user to connect to the Internet once after installation and every 30 days thereafter for single-player or same-screen multiplayer mode.

Sorry - DRM is still evil. I might consider a game or something that I have to connect to the internet ONE TIME for verification. Every thirty days after? No sale. No phone home features, thank you very much.

They put free books online. They are free as in free beer, just download it and enjoy. Free, free, free. Baen pirated the books himself, opening his own warez site to do so.

Multiple authors have noted that soon after putting the book online for free, sales of that book skyrocket. Mostly, they put older, out of print books online, but that book immediately sells like hotcakes in bookstores around the nation. Hell, around the world, I guess. Not only does

Multiple authors have noted that soon after putting the book online for free, sales of that book skyrocket.

That works for books because there is another medium in which some people prefer to view the same work. People who prefer to read books in a paper form have an opportunity to pay to upgrade their experience from free reading on an electronic device to paid paper. If an entire old video game is given away, on the other hand, people can upgrade their experience from free-to-play on the device to paid what?

I'm not the one trying to make a living by entertaining people. In fact, I'm very UNentertaining. People pay to not see or to hear me.

What I know for sure is, gaming is trying to follow in the footsteps of the music and movie industries. They really need to back up, look at reality, and find another way to go.

I no longer play games. I got tired of them. But, I know for a fact, that purchasing a game, only to run into DRM bullshit only forces people to torrent the cracked versions. I did it, and I've watched my sons do it. Whether it's a CD check, or an online activation check, or whatever, if I have to jump through a hoop to play the game, it's not worth playing. Just grab the cracked version, and you don't have to jump ANY hoops.

Just entertain people, and see if they reward you. Stop treating entertainment like it has to be a big business. Don't spend 3 million dollars developing a game, in the hopes that you'll make twelve million in sales. That's just retarded Hollywierd thinking.

You say that as if paid games are somehow better than pirated ones. I've bought plenty of paid games sometimes multiple times each. Each time I end up downloading and playing a cracked version because it wouldn't tell me I couldn't play it if my 'net screwed up or if their DRM scheme somehow screwed up.

The cracked versions are an upgrade, and this coming from a paying customer.

Getting games to work correctly is hard enough without introducing new ways they can fail on purpose that can also fail on acc

It's not even that (children snitching candy). If a kid steals a candy bar, that candy bar is gone. It is a loss to the shop. If a kid downloads a game it is not stealing, there is no measurable loss. Any "loss" is hypothetical and the kid downloading the game from TPB can have multiple reasons: a) kid have no money b) kid can't buy the game (stupid ratings) c) the game is not available in stores d) kid is lazy and don't like to go downtown to the store e) it's Sunday and the store is closed, and so on.

This is a very bold statement that sums it all up. The goal of management is to maximise profit, and a 0 sales increase translates into a loss. I understand that DRM is evil for an entirely different set of reasons, that the general public will hopefully understand in a decade or two and vote against DRM with their feet (wallets). Until that happens, it is all about maximising short-term profit, and if your statement can be proven with a bunch of marketing experiments then the simple truth will enter manage

Oh please they all know that. I'm not some kind of genius and the people in EA (for example) that working every day on the same problem, they all know that. DRM is not about piracy, copyright is not about authors.

DRM and copyright is about control. The biggest fear of all is the loss of control about art, culture, information, products. If we didn't had such strict copyright (150 years or whatever) then we all would live in a very different world. There would be no big studios possible, there would be liter

Citations? It's been shown again and again that the music industry makes truckloads of money, every single year. The corporations that invest in these overnight wonders have never had a "loss". They make money no matter the economy.

The only claims for losses are hyperinflated bullshit tales told to lawmakers, when speaking in favor of ever stricter copyright law.

"What non-evil solution do you have to the problem of mass copyright infringement?"

By doing something more evil. Ok, I'm trolling. What I mean is that you create a game that doesn't care whether it's bittorrented to hell. Some "evil" games are able to get clueless players addicted who'd be willing to pay $$$ to level up. So why not create a FPShooter where a less-skilled player gets a chance to buy tokens for an Ironman-style exoskeleton impervious to most low-to-mid-grade attacks? Technically this will inv

Heh... DRM's not a mandatory thing for Steam use. It's another lego block in the API. At least a good part of the Indie titles don't use that lego block. Personally, I'm not for DRM, mind...but I do hope you're not ever using a gaming console, because by definition, you're using DRMed titles- PERIOD.

Nearly every game for NES, Super NES, or Sega Genesis works in emulation on Linux. If you have a Retrode, you can turn your Super NES or Genesis cartridges into ROM files and play them that way, or you can use a Kazzo to dump NES cartridges.

And if you're not into emulation, you can try Wine, which is not an emulator. Plenty of PC games made for Windows work in Linux through Wine. Or you can try a load of amateur games made with SDL or Pygame.

I play L4D2 almost exclusively now, and I haven't had a Win box for several years.

But instagib in Nexuiz or Zotonic and CTF in AssaultCube is still fun. The latter could probably run on a Raspberry Pi. Really love Vendetta Online but it takes too much time.Just bought the FPS humble bundle and the GF is away all week so I hope to expand my horizon.

Coming from the open geek culture of F/OSS beware of rude gamers though.

Though, if you want a gaming laptop, someone will hopefully intervene and nudge you away from it as the name is kind of oxymoronic. Even in 2013, I believe people need to be disabused of the idea that (short of spending $5,000 on an insane system every year for a 12lb crazy ass laptop) there is really such a thing as a "gaming" laptop.

Except maybe for linux, because on linux the majority of ported games tend to be . . . a little more trivial (sorry, I tried to come up with a less dismissive word).

I bought an alienware abut 4 years ago. Cost me about 3,000 and will still play everything that comes out just fine (though no longer at max settings). At the time I was working as a merchant marine so it was great to have something to take on the ship with me. Even now I use it as a backup/lan party machine rather than taking my whole desktop setup. However little sense these machines may make for most people they do serve a useful purpose in the market.

Even in 2013, I believe people need to be disabused of the idea that (short of spending $5,000 on an insane system every year for a 12lb crazy ass laptop) there is really such a thing as a "gaming" laptop.

You might not be able to get PS4- or Durango-class gaming on a laptop, but PS3-class gaming is certainly attainable. In the past, Intel's "GMA" integrated graphics processor has been nicknamed "Graphics My Ass" compared to even a low-end AMD or NVIDIA GPU. But a year ago, a PC with an Ivy Bridge CPU was seen to run Skyrim at over 40 fps [anandtech.com]. If a PS3-class game runs that well on Intel graphics, think of how much better AMD's laptop GPUs will handle it.

I wouldn't consider a laptop that is capable of playing games at a level comparable to a 2005 video game console to be particularly appealing nor considered a "gaming laptop". I would assert that for something to truly be a "gaming laptop", it should be able to play modern games recently released with only minor acceptable sacrifices (obviously, not running with maximum eye-candy cranked up, for example). I think this is an especially fair demand framed in the context of how expensive they are.

it should be able to play modern games recently released with only minor acceptable sacrifices (obviously, not running with maximum eye-candy cranked up, for example).

That depends on what you mean by "recently released" and "acceptable sacrifices". Skyrim was first published in the fourth quarter of 2011 (source: Wikipedia), and Ivy Bridge graphics pulled 40+ fps on Medium settings (source: Anandtech). And as I said earlier, there are laptop GPUs more powerful than the one in Ivy Bridge. My point is that any laptop with an NV or AMD GPU is probably a "gaming laptop" by now.

I bought a Sager Midern gaming notebook 3 years ago, for right about $2000. It is heavy, but more like 9 lbs not 12.

Yeah, it was pricier than a regular notebook, and I could have gotten a more awesome desktop for that much, but overall, I'm really happy with the gaming notebook.It has decent stats for me (core i7, 6 GB, 500 GB HD originally but I swapped out for a 250 GB SSD, 17" 1920x1200 screen, GeForce 285M, wireless). I'm not into FPS games so I don't need every graphics setting maxed out. This thing pl

I'm typing on a machine I bought a week ago -- an Asus G46. It's a 14" machine that is a bit overbuilt (important to me because I want something durable), but still clocks in at about 5 pounds. The CPU is a 3GHz dual-core i5, which is really not so bad; the GPU is a GTX660M, which runs anything I have thrown at it at very high FPS. (I actually don't have games installed yet that will really stress it, but people's reviews rate it very highly.) It runs quite cool; the cooling system on the thing

What actually is a "gaming laptop"? One with an i7 processor and a non-Intel video card? That's not that difficult to buy. A quick search of Amazon shows me 96 results for just that. 31 of them have a 17" or greater screen size too. Pretty much every PC manufacturer is represented there.

No judgement on price though; the ones I can see look fair enough at £500-£700.

I'd consider a gaming laptop to be a laptop that can play current releases just fine at reasonable frame rate and only sacrificing the graphic fidelity a little bit (meaning, not dropping everything to minimum). Being able to play a game that was released five years ago shouldn't really qualify it as a "gaming laptop". Also, you have to factor in the price of a laptop that can meet this requirement and then consider how quickly it will become obsolete for that function. Unless you sleep on piles of money ev

To me, a "gaming laptop" is a laptop that is too big or heavy to comfortably carry around or sit on top of your lap and has hardware (CPU/GPU) that emphezises processing power over energy consumption.Basically, it's a gaming desktop that is convenient for dragging along to a LAN party but not very convenient for typical laptop use.

They've not been that way for a long time, if you get ones that have x60-class (560, 660, etc.,) GPU's rather than the 580/680 class ones. They may not run all your games on ultra at 1920x1080 with FSAA on, but is that really that big of a deal?

I'm sitting here with one in my lap right now, actually. It's barely warm, not that heavy, not that big (it's small enough that I plug it into a real monitor when I'm at home), the battery lasts a long time, and it still runs games quite well. No, it's not a beast wi

I've been looking at replacing my MacBook Pro with a non-Mac. The reason for this is that MacBooks are weak in the Video RAM (VRAM) department (the thing that actually makes a difference in gaming these days) and I'm like more than 1 GB of RAM. A Retina Display with high pixel count also makes the limited VRAM of the Mac even worse. I also *loathe* glossy screens.

The Alienware machines are ok. The big problem for me is the fact that the ones I can buy online are either 14 inch or 17 inch form factors. No

I haven't followed them much, since the brand was acquired by Dell, but yes - they're one of those Northwest Falcon / Doghouse Systems type of companies that build you a gaming rig for a lot more than you could build one yourself (between 150% and 200% of what you could put it together yourself for). That isn't to say it's a total rip off, but you could reasonably also find someone to build it to your specs for you if you don't want to do the dirty work and still come out a lot cheaper than paying the "ther

I saw this article on gamingonlinux.com last night. I was interested in one when I first saw the article. The casing was OK and you could get some decent hardware configurations, on top of that the pricing listed (for the American market) made the product a reasonable option. So I decided to see what was available for the Australian market and the price was one of the two points I made on why I would pass. The other was the fact that on the Australian Dell Alien page, there was no option for Ubuntu when I l

A struggling computer manufacturer has the brilliant idea of combining two struggling brands in the hope of saving itself. Ubuntu has been "meh" for a while now, and Alienware has earned a reputation for being overpriced crap. Who knows, maybe this will work for Dell. But I doubt it. The kiddies and the people attracted to shiny are all about smart-phones and tablets. They don't want a lap/desktop anymore. That means the market has shifted, and those of us still left in the computer market are a hell of a l

Not comical. Revealing desperate for any traction at all, sure. Dell clearly thinks that branch of product can't do well enough on Win alone, and "linux gaming" has been making headlines lately, so what the heck.

Ubuntu itself doesn't matter per se. They'd go with Ubuntu because they'd want the closest to 'safe well-supported mainstream brand' they could find. But it's no turn-off to anyone who'd prefer another distro because they'll load it easy enough, and the 'ubuntu inside' assures them it's a high end l

Ah, but you see, it doesn't matter - if the hardware is compatible with Ubuntu, it should be compatible with *any* modern enough Linux. Which is why having Ubuntu, even if it's not what you use, is so important.

Sort of. If you look closely, you see that the Ubuntu is $100 cheaper list-price but has a $100 discount there. The Windows one has a $200 discount. So the final price comes to the same for each, $1049. The only hardware difference I see is the hard drive: Windows has 2TB, Ubuntu has 1TB. Which explains why the latter is $100 cheaper: Not license fee difference, but just that it has a cheaper drive. I'm not sure why this is, but perhaps Microsoft specifies 2TB as a minimum for a Windows 8 desktop. Just to s

Or Dell, like any other company, is trying to make a profit and sees an opportunity to get some additional markup. You could also speculate that if they make the Ubuntu boxes cheaper, more people would buy them not knowing what Ubuntu is. Then when they try and install their copy of The Sims they will call Dell and complain. This raises their support costs for the computers and thus has to be included in the base sale price.

Sort of. If you look closely, you see that the Ubuntu is $100 cheaper list-price but has a $100 discount there. The Windows one has a $200 discount. So the final price comes to the same for each, $1049. The only hardware difference I see is the hard drive: Windows has 2TB, Ubuntu has 1TB. Which explains why the latter is $100 cheaper: Not license fee difference, but just that it has a cheaper drive. I'm not sure why this is, but perhaps Microsoft specifies 2TB as a minimum for a Windows 8 desktop. Just to s

I read somewhere that the average cost of a single customer care call to Dell is higher than what they pay MS for their Windows license. So if Dell (for some reason only they can answer) expect to get more customer care calls when selling a Linux-PC (fx driver/compatibility questions, etc., and the odd user not knowing what s/he bought) then yes, it can be a more expensive machine to Dell even if the OS is free.

Until you have Linux software publishers willing to pay an OEM to load their trialware on the system and a Linux distro decides to help pay for Linux-based system advertising Windows-based systems will always be less.

For every enthusiastic Linux supporter there are several (I suspect) burned Linux netbook purchasers that vowed never again to buy a Linux system... The market share for Linux systems is very, very small & uncertain. Many Linux advocates like to talk about how Linux runs great on last gener

Until you have Linux software publishers willing to pay an OEM to load their trialware on the system

Then try this: Install Wine. Download the trialware yourself onto a fresh Linux box. Try installing it. Make a report on Wine's AppDB. Tell the publisher whether it worked. Tell the publisher that PC makers are starting to sell PCs with GNU/Linux, and the company could get a few bucks from selling registered versions to people who buy these PCs.

Many Linux advocates like to talk about how Linux runs great on last generation hardware

Windows Vista failed because it ran poorly on machines that ran XP well, such as anything with less than 1 GB of RAM. So after the perceived failure of Windows Vista

> Many Linux advocates like to talk about how Linux runs great on last generation hardware, which does not encourage OEMs to race out and offer high-end (expensive) systems

No. Linux users are smart and demanding. That makes them harder marks for fraud and nonsense.

They understand the math and are less likely to pay a lot more for marginal improvements of little value. This can be paying too much for the CPU or the video card or paying the extra premium for a compact form factor when you don't really need

maybe they're rolling into the price what they think will be an increased tech support cost. but they probably won't offer tech support for ubuntu anyway. wait a sec, i haven't bought a whole system since 99, is tech support still a thing?

I'm not interested in purchasing a "gaming desktop" or any other type of desktop, but I certainly am willing to pay more for Linux bundled on a machine. Yes, not paying the "Microsoft tax" is so important to me that I'm willing to pay extra money to ensure that my dollars are not going to Redmond.

I'm constantly surprised at how some people can only see the bad side to any news.

Finally we're seeing mainstream acceptance of Linux as an alternative to Windows and yet people still complain. This is a great first step, a major manufacturer is putting Linux onto machines designed to be sold to the home in a competitive way. It can only lead to good things, more game manufacturers taking notice and developing their games for the platform, which in turn will make the hardware vendors made decent drivers.

And yet all some people can focus on is the fact that this machine doesn't suit their own personal special snowflake situation. the mind boggles!

I'm constantly surprised at how some people can only see the bad side to any news.

Finally we're seeing mainstream acceptance of Linux as an alternative to Windows and yet people still complain. This is a great first step, a major manufacturer is putting Linux onto machines designed to be sold to the home in a competitive way. It can only lead to good things, more game manufacturers taking notice and developing their games for the platform, which in turn will make the hardware vendors made decent drivers.

And yet all some people can focus on is the fact that this machine doesn't suit their own personal special snowflake situation. the mind boggles!

Some people are unwilling to appreciate a "better" situation because it's not the "best" situation. An adult version of throwing temper tantrums.

You might, but I'd like it on a decent gaming machine which would force the hardware companies to provide decent drivers. And guess what, all the kids who buy a Linux gaming machine will grow up using Linux along with things like Open Office, so when they get to the work place the Microsoft stranglehold will be loosened.

Though you're right, I'd like the offering to be more prominent (and available in the UK!) but its still a good start and not to be scoffed at.

This sort of attitude really annoys me. People have always said crap like this, like "why would anyone need this automobile? there are no petrol stations so where would I be able to go", or "who is ever going to need more than 640k of RAM?" its all just so short sighted.

In the near term maybe people have to use Wine to get access to the latest games, however the fact that this is being sold might wake games developers up to that they're missing out on a market. And once they start developing, everyone else

This is cool and all being that linux is slowly starting to take off in the world of the gamers. But my bigger concern is, what is dell/alienware doing about the IvyBridge switchable graphics? I have an Alienware M14x R2 with the 3rd gen i5 and a nvidia gtx650. BIOS doesn't let you enable just the video card you must run ivybridge at all times, so how do they plan to implement Bumblebee or maybe their own type of driver? I have ran ArchLinux on my alienware for a few months now, and i have barely been able

Why bother? Linux does not run anything that a 'gamer' or most modern people would want.Sure it runs like what 4 new games that this company 'steam' arranged..oh wow.

Honestly, while nothing against Linux, it's about getting the job done more than romance for pretty much most people. People just want to run tons of random programs and heaps of games and I mean heaps.. they want to just buy a printer or scanner, joystick, heck even an iphone - and want it to just work. Hello it's not 1993 anymore these things

And yet, I have things that "just work" on linux which don't work at all on Windows.. Removable drives with more than one partition, for one. I can take any flash drive, partition it with two partitions(say one for work and one for play, one for LiveCDs and one for files). Any Linux will see and use all partitions. Windows 7 will only see one. It's frigging annoying.Or, say, booting off USB. With USB3, you could easily use an external USB3 drive to boot, and haul it between three computers so you have all y

Well lookie here. Dell offering a high spec Linux laptop. I'm just shocked! Michael Dell who would normally have Steve Balmer's cock farther down his throat than would generally be considered comfortable must have come up for air long enough to allow this laptop to slip past. What is the world coming too? It does show that Microsoft's power is waining. Once people see how far advanced Ubuntu 13 is above Windows 8..... Well it is the preverbal camel's nose under the tent. If you have an M$ stock, I'd be sell

Now, we need games written in OpenGL, not DirectX. Will benefit both Linux and OS X. I'm keeping Win7 on my main computer for games. For everything else, it's OS X. No, it's not a Mac. Apple doesn't sell the machine I need (mini-tower)

honestly the idea of linux is perfect but how it's done is completely bad... when it comes down to it... really linux is a hack job between everyone who is programing for it.
we need a central force to unify all the distro's and get them under one tent... kernal,gnu... all the little peaces of Linux .
honestly if i am reading the tea leaves right Valve software is thinking that way... every time we have a fight in the linux world we "tree" off and split the community's to a point now that each group hates

And most of the commercial Linux games are pretty expensive. That's going to be a tough sell as a Steam box.

Your talking about legacy gaming, Modern gaming is cross-platform, with Windows being a shrinking platform [Microsoft treating the the Windows Desktop as an xbox ugly stepchild; its gamers like its prison bitches DRM victims; child only games], with Linux/Android being a massive groth industry [and a refuge for Valves business model:)]

The story might have been relevant to my interests in 2002. But it's clear now Linux is going to skip popularity on desktops and just do mobile instead.

Linux has been gaining market share on all platforms including the Desktop. The Desktop is just not sexy right now with, Windows Desktop users having a slight dip sales and Apple its a disaster on the Desktop...but Linux suddenly is checking all the boxes. Personally though I'm loving the support of having a shared kernel with its more successful market.

Windows is having a dip in sales because old machines "do the job". When a C2D does the job fine, why upgrade to the latest and greatest?

...no they don't do the job! They are awful in every way. Where is my Android compatibility on obscenely high DPI on a 32" screen with a keyboard with LED keys? Where is all these manufacturers reinventing the Desktop...and no I don't mean Windows OS X or GNOME 3...I suspect what I want is GNU/Chrome? with serious corperate backing. Why I am still buying a tower pc in one part, rather than stacking the bits I want like lego bricks. Why can I not use the CPU in my Phone to power my desktop without wires...an